Everywhere you look at the moment someone or somewhere is talking about the changes a foot for the legal sector. There is still a lot of uncertainty as to who is going to be offering these Alternative Business Services (ABSs) but one thing is for certain it is going to change the face of the legal sector as we know it today.

We are already starting to see how some firms are looking to engage with consumers and take hold of their slice of the market. Others are simply walking away from these consumer based services and concentrating their efforts on the more business focused laws.

Either way all firms regardless of size need their go to market messages to be clear and leave no room for confusion, as to the services they offer and why a business or consumer would want to emotionally engage with them.

Are you ready for the changes? Why would anyone choose you over a major consumer brand?

We would love to hear the actions you are taking and show you how we can make this change run smoothly.

Many companies miss the point of employee engagement by using strategies that are focused on secondary issues for employees such as flexible work patterns, or pay and reward systems. Employee Engagement can be significantly improved by hitting your employees’ top seven emotional drivers.

Research has identified the following top seven emotional drivers:

1. Feeling valued

2. A feeling of being fairly treated

3. A feeling of being ‘in the know’ and listened to

4. A sense of involvement (belonging)

5. A sense of personal growth & development

6. Belief in the employer’s honesty and purpose

7. Feeling safe (job security)

Notice that these drivers are all ‘feelings’. Decisions on whether or not to engage are made by the emotional brain rather than by the rational brain. Even when a person tries to be rational and reasoned, emotional impulses secretly influence judgement.

Do you agree that emotional reward is more important to the workforce than financial reward when it comes to employee engagement?

The latest evidence suggests that many employers are barking up the wrong tree when it comes to engaging with their workforce.

Thorough research has shown that employees make engagement decisions on fundamentally emotional grounds. However, generally organisational development has followed a ‘rational-brain’ paradigm and there has been little place for emotions in the Scientific Management model, nor in the behavioural science approach to management.

As a result, most engagement strategies being employed are focused on secondary issues for employees such as flexible work patterns, or pay and reward systems. This approach underestimates the crucial need to satisfy your employees’ innate emotional drivers.

What have you/your company done to make the workforce feel more valued in lieu of traditional methods of giving financial rewards?

The first step in enhancing empolyee engagement for any company is to provide a climatewhere the workforce “feel” good about themselves and the company they work for. Companies devote huge budgets to brand development and promotion of products and services externally, however, the value of internal branding and employee engagement is a huge factor which is often relegated and viewed as the poor relation.

Internal Engagement is 20% culture, 80% climate. To employees, climate is more important than culture: it is primarily how they “feel” and what happens in the workplace on a day-to-day basis. It means that the atmosphere and climate of the workplace, the “emotional centre” as it were, should now be the most important focus area for employers.

Managers have a pivotal role to play, with the relationship between the employee and their immediate manager accounting for some 80% of decisions to engage or disengage, to ‘go-the-extra-mile’ or do the bare minimum. Employee engagement has to start from the top down, with buy-in from senior management being critical in order to develop genuine emotional engagement, peak performance and a loyal committed workforce.

What are your views on this? Do you believe that companies put too much emphasis on external branding and communication to the detriment of internal engagement?

Company branding is key to reputation management and building a brand begins on the inside, boosting employee satisfaction and productivity with internal communications. Companies devote huge budgets to brand products and services externally but the value of internal branding with employees and other internal constituents is an often overlooked factor in business success: A company’s workforce is the living embodiment of its brand in action. If they are engaged, they can bring the brand to life and deliver differentiated experiences in their every interaction with customers creating a virtuous circle between employees, consumers and business performance.

So what does Internal Brand Engagement actually involve? It’s about creating a faster employee understanding of how they can be ‘on Brand’ and maintain it long term. This enables organisations to respond to market conditions, competitor activity or customer needs swiftly, whilst holding true to its core brand values.

Big Yellow utilizes workshops and interviews, using unique emotional engagement tools and techniques to align key stakeholders (managers, supervisors etc) behind common brand values and behaviours. Alongside this, stakeholders are trained to empower staff to deliver brand values externally to customers, and to maintain the feel good factors generated by the initial engagement programme. Quite often we find there is a disagreement amongst members of senior management on what their brand actually stands for. This confusion will filter down to all levels of the organization if it isn’t addressed.

The current economic climate has put severe strain on the employer-employee relationship. In many cases the feeling that pay freezes and job cuts impact the staff but not the executives has fuelled an air of resentment, so do organisations and employers really understand the importance of engaging their employees emotionally?

A recent Gallup poll indicates that 26% of employees give extra effort regularly, 18% are actively disengaged or “checked out” while the remainder, 56%, are not engaged or “on the fence.” This latter group represents a huge engagement opportunity for employers but will they act on it?

If steps aren’t taken to engage emotionally with this group, some companies could find themselves losing staff in droves once the job situation improves.

What do you think? Do you agree that employee loyalty is emotional, not rational, and what steps will you be taking this year to engage with your staff?

Hello world! I can’t believe its taken us this long to start blogging!

We are Big Yellow Marketing, an integrated, full service agency with over 20 years of hard won experience.

We specialise in Emotional Marketing – helping our clients to differentiate and position themselves to gain a competitive edge in their increasingly commoditised and rationalised marketplaces.

Did you know 98% of purchasing decisions are driven by emotion and justified by logic?

Our clients are a wide range of SME and larger corporate organisations, and we are equally at home operating in both b2b and b2c. Revealing what makes your brand positively different – and emotionally connecting it to align stakeholders, motivate employees and encourage customers to buy, is at the heart of our success.

We’d love to get your feedback on how you emotionally connect with your target audience.

Watch this space for details of workshops we are running, interesting articles and lots more on emotional engagement!